Tech, Life and Everyday Living
I have been a fan of the G-Maps app for awhile now because they have been the only true app to serve turn by turn directions before the 3.0 software update. They just updated their app and now it’s true voice turn by turn, and I just took it for a test drive on my new 3GS and it’s faster than ever. I went off route and it found the way in no time, with the voice lady telling me when to turn, the only setback is that it doesn’t announce street names, but if you have your iPhone mounted like I do, you can glance at the upcoming street, but it tells you when to turn well before you have to turn.
It’s a little pricey and they have two flavors because it’s so big, east and west, so make sure you get the one for your area.



I wasn’t impressed with the battery life on my iPhone 3G, but the 3GS is a lot better. Planning on going on a little trip this year, I decided to start looking at battery packs for the iPhone. I decided upon the Mophie Juice Pack Air (Amazon Link). This product is great. It doubles the life of my iPhone battery, and it’s smart about it. It has an on/off switch, so you can turn it off, but the thing I like the most is that when it’s on, it will drain the juice pack air first, and then the iPhone battery. It comes with it’s own cable, so when you plug it into the computer it will charge the juice pack or iPhone, and you are also able to sync, it will also charge if you plug it into the power adaptor that came with the iPhone. I got the white version because I have a white iPhone, but they have black and purple available as well.
It retails for $79.95, and it’s worth the price.
Buy the Mophie Juice Pack Air from Amazon
Juice Pack Air Photos



*Update from a company spokesperson @beamMEpro, folks who bought the pro version prior to the 3.0 version update will get a free lifetime subscription, also if your subscription says free trial and you bought early, please bear with them as they are still working out some bugs. This is still the best app for sending vCards, and I still recommend you get this app.*
The top iPhone app for sending a vCard has updated to version 3.0 that adds peer-to-peer beaming via Bluetooth, along with a couple other changes. The first being the price is lower it’s now $1.99 whereas the old price was around $5.99. The one catch to the lower price is they have decided to implement a subscription service. The new update will only work on iPhone OS 3.0, so if you don’t update your OS, don’t update beamME Pro.

The subscription service will work as follows, this is from the rmbrME help page:
Along with the launch of beamME Pro 3.0, we’re pleased to introduce our new subscription feature. In an effort to bring you a constant stream of feature upgrades, and to minimize clutter on your home screen, we’ve made beamME pro 3.0 an attractively priced and broadly available subscription service.
By subscribing, you get access to all the professional features of beamME pro, plus continuous upgrades and priority support. Subscription plans are available for pennies a day – and we’re sure you won’t want to miss this opportunity to network like the pros. Subscribe today – download beamME Pro and click on Account, Subscription.
If you purchased beamME Pro, CV or Pitch prior to June 23, 2009, you will automatically be offered a lifetime subscription to beamME Pro’s blue tier of service. This ensures that you continue to receive the features you paid for in reasonable perpetuity, along with all planned bug fixes and some feature enhancements. In the future, we may release new features which will require you to upgrade to a higher tier of service, but in the meantime, we will make every effort to give you advance notice and special access.
New users (those who have purchased the app after June 23) will not be able to upgrade their subscriptions quite yet, but the app will function normally while they work on a fix. The silver lining is that previous owners are rewarded with a lifetime subscription to their “blue tier service” since you paid the full price for the app.
Do you think the move to subscription based was a smart move? I loved the app the way it is, and paid full price because I use it all the time. Do I think it’s fair that people who paid full price have to now pay more to keep the features they were using along with updates to the app, NO, they should give the people who paid full price complimentary lifetime subscriptions, otherwise I believe this app will not get used or downloaded anymore. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
So for the past week or so, I have had my posts scheduled, and they have decided to have a mind of their own and not publish on time, I just recently found out that they are transferring the website to a different server because they are having problems with the hardware on the one mine is hosted on, this should’ve happened months ago, but I am glad they are finally getting around to it. I’m sorry for the late posts, but bear with me.
-Brian